First up, stop panicking. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making the wrong decision, have hooked up with the wrong guy or about to leave your fiancee standing at the aisle. It actually means you take the commitment seriously - and that’s a good thing. Plenty of people I know have said to me ‘It’s no big deal. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll just get divorced’, before pulling down their veil and taking their father’s arm. At least you’re thinking about it!
It’s a completely normal reaction to freak a little because it does mean you’re losing freedom in the sense that you’re pledging monogamy. Just thank your lucky stars though it’s not the old days when you had to kiss goodbye to basically doing anything without your husband or wife. That’s why stag and hen’s nights were invented but are now really outdated – they were meant to celebrate your last night out with the lads or the girls. These days, you’re likely to be back out with the lads or the girls the week after the honeymoon. Things will change psychologically but if you’re already living together, day to day life will probably be just the same.
Having said that, while it’s natural to have last minute doubts, pay attention to them. If your doubts are about marriage as an institution and worries over whether you’ll end up a statistic and ‘ohmigod I have to be faithful forever; stuff, you’ll usually ok. They’re the things everyone grapples with, no matter how in love they are.
Also don’t be surprised if you start thinking about significant exes. It’s normal to think, ‘maybe I should have married so and so’. I know plenty of people in fact, who have gone back and had a final fling with an ex to convince themselves it really is over and they really should be marrying their current partner. I’m certainly not advocating that but I am saying thoughts about an ex aren’t uncommon.
What you do need to take notice of however are fears you’re settling down with the wrong person. If all of your friends and family are planning on wearing black to the wedding because they sooo don’t want you to marry this person, I’d be questioning myself too! Our friends and family can be right so-and-so’s sometimes but most of the time they just want us to be happy. And sometimes they see things you don’t.
Be wary also if you’re rushing into it. The question then is ‘Why?’. If you really are in love and want to spend the rest of your lives together, what’s the hurry? Long-term relationships tend to get boring very quickly. Weddings, buying a house, kids – we space them out to keep things interesting. If you speed it up and do everything in the first year, what’s left to look forward to? Now we all know people who’ve fallen in love and got married in six weeks and they’ve lived happily ever after. But we also know people who’ve done that and ended up with divorced six months later. Aka almost every celebrity in heat magazine. If you want to give your marriage the best possible chance, all the statistics say you should date for 18 months and marry after the two year mark. Getting married in the third year of knowing each other seems to be the safest bet.
What to do if think you are making the wrong choice? Rather than talk with friends/family or partner, I’d actually suggest taking yourself off to see a counsellor. Someone who can give you a totally objective viewpoint. Then maybe talk to a trusted friend or your partner. Also remember, you have an option of postponing your wedding so you don’t lose all your deposits etc. I know plenty of people who’ve put it off for six months or so, then ended up going ahead. Don’t be bullied.
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People react in different ways when they realise they’re about to split up - they either get horribly, horribly upset and want to cry. Or they get angry. Or, if you both sort of know it’s coming, they get nostalgic. Thing is, all three reactions produce one thing: strong emotion. And strong emotion is always accompanied by high hormone levels. Because sexual stimulation also causes a surge in our hormones, the brain can sometimes think, ‘Hang on, I know what this means - they’re about to have sex!’. Which is why couples suddenly find themselves incredibly turned on and having fantastic sex in the aftermath of one of the saddest or horrible moments of their life.
On top of this, there’s the thought that this is probably the last time you’ll ever have sex with this person for the rest of your life. The emotion behind it makes this sex session far more meaningful than others. If that’s the last time, it can sometimes also mean it’s the only time you ever let go. You don’t mind exposing your ‘real’ sexual self - maybe one that’s a little less squeaky clean than you’ve lead your partner to believe - because who cares if they judge you? They’ve already rejected you or you’ve rejected them.
The problem, of course, with having great break-up sex is this: you both look at each other afterward and wonder why the hell you’re breaking up if the sex is beyond spectacular. And sometimes, you’re right. If the problem you’re splitting over is trivial or solveable, connecting in such a powerful way might be enough to jolt you both out of stubborn sulks and into sensible problem solving mode. But be warned: a great roll in the hay does not always mean it’s still worth sharing the barn together.
Fact: if you decide you do want to stay together, don’t be surprised if your sex life rather rapidly returns to whatever it was like before the break-up. Secondly - and most importantly - great sex alone isn’t enough to build a life-lasting relationship on. You need other things to go with it. Even if the sex was the best you’ve had in your life, if you can’t see eye to eye out of bed, it’s pointless. People break up for a reason and since you two were about to, you’re still better off focusing on that and coming up with solutions, than jumping back in bed for round two. However tempting that might be!
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Did you catch Tracey Cox on the TODAY show? Check out more from the iVillage sex expert, starting with some of our all-time favorite columns:
- Sex Positions for Fat Days and more
- Give Him a Hand: 7 "Manual Sex" Secrets
- Pull Off a Striptease Like a Pro: 11 Tips
- PLUS: Try Tracey's New Perfect Position Selector Tool!
We’ve all done it: watched a romantic film with our partner and let out a little sigh, thinking ‘Why isn’t my relationship like that?’. Most of us realise NO relationships are like that and get on with it. But some people get stuck – and maybe that’s you. The problem, when you compare your real life relationship to the relationships you see on TV or the movies, is a feeling of constant dissatisfaction and disappointment. In fact, I think a big portion of the blame for our high divorce rate can be dumped straight at the feet of TV and Hollywood producers. Why? Because pretty much all the relationships on TV are based on a fairy floss model of monogamy. If the couple struggle at any point, it’s fixed within that half hour show. You don’t see a couple struggle for months trying to come up with a solution. Which is what happens in real life. You don’t see the boring bits because who wants to watch them? They’re cut out of the TV show or film because they’re boring – so we tend to think if our relationship has these boring points, it must be a boring relationship. It’s not boring, it’s normal. Even super stimulating, ‘perfect’ relationships have boring patches. It would be odd not to!
What isn’t depicted on television is that relationships wax and wane. Over a marriage of ten years, you might adore your partner the first two, resent them for the third for working too hard, the fifth year you had a child so you probably don’t have sex for the next two but on the eight anniversary you might look at each other and think ‘My God, haven’t we been through a lot and done well’ and you’re back in love again and even more in love than you were first time around.
I wish someone had told me that you can actually fall out of love with your partner and fall back in love with them. Because TV and the movies don’t show this, people leave when the relationship hits rock bottom not realising it might have recovered!
Sex on telly and in Hollywood is even more falsely represented. No one uses a condom, no one gets a sexually transmitted disease, no-one gets thrush, cystitis or even wind. And everyone has simultaneous orgasms. Which contrary to popular opinion – which says we have them as often as we have a hot breakfast – is extremely rare.
Then there’s the glamorous leading man we’re lusting after, wishing our partner were more like them. I hate to point out the obvious but the person you think you’re in love with is just an image –often a manufactured image deliberately put forward by their agent. They want to be seen a certain way so they behave a certain way. This is why kiss and tell stories sell so much – we hear the person we’ve been fantasising about is nothing like that in real life. A horrible disappointment, yes. But a reminder that no-one is perfect, so maybe your real life partner isn’t that bad after all!
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